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As we return to glorious standard time, where the sun actually reflects what time of day it is at this time of year, I have found myself with a nagging sinus headache all day, which hot compresses, eye drops, and copious hydration have done little to help. I blame Daylight Savings, and that brings me to the topic for this short placeholder post: Daylight Savings Delenda Est.
For those who were not the beneficiaries of a classical education, that is a play on Carthago Delenda Est, which is a shortening of Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam, a quote that means "Furthermore, I consider that Carthage must be destroyed," which was something Cato the Elder used to end every single speech he gave in the senate between the end of the Second Punic War and the beginning of the Third.
Anyway, I doubt I feel as strongly about Daylight Savings as Cato felt about the Punic Wars (or about anything - dude was intense), but I do think it's actually, legitimately bad and harmful. When it starts, kids have to walk to school or wait for buses in the dark. The shock of losing an hour of sleep and hard rebooting your circadian rhythm apparently causes all kinds of health problems, including a not-proven-to-be-causal correlation with an increase in heart attacks. Perhaps most importantly, but least directly, the very idea that we can and should unmoor time from the rhythms of the sun on which it is based is technocratic, modernist hubris of the worst kind.
All that being said, I'm a reasonable man. While my preference is definitely for eliminating Daylight Savings and going back to having standard time all year round, I am willing to settle for any solution that eliminates the time changes back and forth. If there's more political will around making it Daylight Savings year round and eliminating Standard Time, fine, I won't fight you too hard. Let's just get back to where the association of clock time and amount of daylight changes the way it should - slowly, day-by-day, as the seasons turn.
And so, Daylight Savings Delenda Est!
For those who were not the beneficiaries of a classical education, that is a play on Carthago Delenda Est, which is a shortening of Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam, a quote that means "Furthermore, I consider that Carthage must be destroyed," which was something Cato the Elder used to end every single speech he gave in the senate between the end of the Second Punic War and the beginning of the Third.
Anyway, I doubt I feel as strongly about Daylight Savings as Cato felt about the Punic Wars (or about anything - dude was intense), but I do think it's actually, legitimately bad and harmful. When it starts, kids have to walk to school or wait for buses in the dark. The shock of losing an hour of sleep and hard rebooting your circadian rhythm apparently causes all kinds of health problems, including a not-proven-to-be-causal correlation with an increase in heart attacks. Perhaps most importantly, but least directly, the very idea that we can and should unmoor time from the rhythms of the sun on which it is based is technocratic, modernist hubris of the worst kind.
All that being said, I'm a reasonable man. While my preference is definitely for eliminating Daylight Savings and going back to having standard time all year round, I am willing to settle for any solution that eliminates the time changes back and forth. If there's more political will around making it Daylight Savings year round and eliminating Standard Time, fine, I won't fight you too hard. Let's just get back to where the association of clock time and amount of daylight changes the way it should - slowly, day-by-day, as the seasons turn.
And so, Daylight Savings Delenda Est!
